


All the Devils Are Here

by juurensha



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Dysfunctional Family, F/M, Family Drama, Gen, Ghost Frigga, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Mother-Son Relationship, Odin's A+ Parenting, Regret
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-14
Updated: 2017-11-14
Packaged: 2019-02-02 04:45:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12719925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juurensha/pseuds/juurensha
Summary: The first thing Frigga feels when they place her squalling son in her arms is relief.Relief that he is a golden-haired boy that takes after her; relief that he is not a dark-haired girl that takes after her father.(Relief that she will not have to once again be in the unenviable position of realizing that her child is better dead than alive.)





	All the Devils Are Here

**Author's Note:**

> So I loved Thor Ragnarok, but Frigga wasn't mentioned at all by Hela, so I wanted to try exploring it. It was hard to write since Hela is a straight up villainess, but I wanted to show that she also is exactly what she was made to be.

The first thing Frigga feels when they place her squalling son in her arms is relief.

Relief that he is a golden-haired boy that takes after her; relief that he is not a dark-haired girl that takes after her father.

(Relief that she will not have to once again be in the unenviable position of realizing that her child is better dead than alive.)

And when Odin brings home a dark-haired boy for them to adopt, she thinks it will be well. Perhaps with a sibling, her two boys can balance each other out and be the steadying hand her daughter never had.

(That is as much her fault as Odin’s.

Hela had always been closer to Odin, preferring martial prowess to the mystic arts, but she was still her daughter. Even in the end, arguing with Odin to kill her rather than just lock her away, she still remembers how Hela had laughed with delight the first time she had summoned a blade.

She loved her, loves her still, but she should have never let Odin mold her into a weapon against their enemies.

But they were different people then; the conquering horde, the glittering army, the empire of Asgard.

Until one day, they finally looked around and saw the monsters they had become in their dreams of conquest, and decided to lay down their weapons and try to repair what they could.

Hela couldn’t though.

The attempted coup was no surprise; what else can a blade do in peacetime? And standing amidst the Valkyries, women Hela had fought alongside for years and years and years, and now all of them slain save for one still cradling the body of another Valkyrie, rocking back and forth and sobbing, she knew that whatever remains of that laughing girl has grown twisted beyond recognition, and that is her sin as much as Odin’s.)

This is their chance at a fresh start; raise her sons to have the compassion and wisdom that they should have given Hela.

So they don’t tell them about how they conquered the nine realms; they give them stories of glory and honor and heroism instead. The murals of Hela’s and Odin’s conquests are painted over with murals of treaties and cooperation, and if she happens to tell more stories of the Valkyries than any other heroes, well, both of her sons are huge fans and beg her to tell the tales over and over again.

(She had asked the last of the Valkyries if she wanted to stay, and she does not blame the woman for spitting on the ground and just walking away.

This is one piece of their history she will not simply hide away.

Gloss over it, hide away Hela’s role, and tell her clamoring boys that the Valkyries disbanded and retired long ago when the war was over, yes. She is not proud of it, but they are not to know of their sister.

No one is.

Perhaps if they wait long enough, no one will remember save her, Odin, Heimdall, and the last of the Valkyries.)

And so life goes on, with her and Odin remaking Asgard to be a peacekeeper rather than a warmonger (few trust them, and she can’t blame them), and her boys growing ever taller and ever stronger. She can almost forget she ever had a daughter, until the first time Loki draws a knife out of thin air and laughs, and Thor manages to block with his toy shield and slam his brother down into the ground with a yell full of pure joy and adrenaline.

(The first time Hela had beat one of the Asgardian warriors into the ground, both Odin and Frigga had embraced her.)

She manages to shake off the memory to pull Loki away from biting Thor’s arm while Thor howls loudly and tearfully, and Loki then also starts crying, and she has to rock and hug both of them until their cries turn into sniffles, and she can turn both of them to her and tell them firmly that play-fighting is one thing, but to always remember that they are brothers.

They nod, Thor wiping his nose with the back of his hand, and Loki rubbing his face with his sleeve. Thor offers Loki a hand, and after staring at it for a bit, Loki takes it, and they walk off hand in hand to the gardens, fight forgotten it seems in favor of arguing over favorite animals.

As they do so, Frigga speaks the incantation she had thought she had buried, and wanders down a path that she had never thought to take again.

It is long and dark, and at the end of it, there is her girl, ragged and pale, but otherwise as if time has never touched her.

Hela’s head jerks up, and she stares at Frigga for several heartbeats before tucking her knees closer to her chest and smirking.

“Well mother. Here to gloat?”

“I did not want you imprisoned here,” Frigga says softly.

“No. You wanted me _dead,”_ Hela snarls, bending forward and slamming a fist against the wall.

Frigga raises an eyebrow and brushes her hand against the wall, “You do not think it would be a better fate, rather than languishing here for all eternity?”

“Yes because dear mother, it will not be for eternity. And when I get out—such vengeance I will have on all of you,” Hela says, her face transforming into the rictus of the same mad grin she had worn when she had slaughtered all the Valkyries.

Frigga shakes her head, “When you get out dear one, your father will be gone. As will I, most likely.”

(Her husband will not die while she still stands.)

“True,” her daughter acknowledges with a tilt of her head, “Then I shall simply ascend to my rightful place on the throne and continue Asgard’s conquest of the universe.”

Frigga sighs, “Is that all you think about, daughter?”

“What else is there left for me to think about?” Hela asks, gesturing around her at the dark empty void.

“You may find it not as easy as you believe,” Frigga says carefully, crossing her arms.

(By the time Odin and her are gone, she hopes that Thor will have been crowned a just and noble king, with Loki at his side to guide him through the spinning plots and machinations of the dance of politics.

Together, she thinks, they could rival her first-born.)

Hela narrows her eyes, “What does that mean? Do you think these wards—no, that’s not it. Have you—wait. No. No, it can’t have been that long—you couldn’t have made a _replacement_ of me _already_!”

Frigga reaches forward (even if they remind her of Hela, Thor with his temper, and Loki with his sly viciousness, they are not her daughter, a hurricane of blades and confidence), “Hela—”

Her daughter slaps her hand away and lunges at her, teeth bared and fingers curled like claws, and Frigga steps back, letting an illusion of herself linger as Hela’s hands aim for her illusion’s neck. Hela whips around towards her, but then she feels a portal open behind her, a familiar hand close around her arm, and she is dragged back to Asgard.

“What were you _thinking_?” Odin demands, hand still tight against her arm.

She yanks her arm back, “I was thinking that I have not seen my daughter in years. That we have hidden her away along with the rest of our past. That there should not be secrets in a family.”

(Easier said than done; Odin lives and breathes secrets.

She knows more than anyone else, but even she probably doesn’t even know all of them.)

Odin shakes his head, “We both agreed that a clean slate would be best—”

“Is it though? They could learn from the past—”

“Learn what? Thor and Loki would only idolize Hela; the conqueror of worlds, a warrior without peer—”

“The destroyer of the Valkyries,” Frigga interjects, “They can still tell who is the hero, and who is the villain of the story.”

Odin lets out a sharp bark of a laugh, “Can you? Can any of us? We would not fare well in the telling of this tale.”

“Then let them know that their parents are human,” Frigga replies, spreading out her hands, “That even the All-father makes mistakes.”

Odin sighs, “Perhaps when they are older.”

(She doubts that he will, and she is not sure if she wants to tell the tale either, but they can’t just leave it like this, can they?

Secrets aren’t what turned Hela into what she is, but they didn’t help.)

“At least let Loki know about his true origins then,” she persists, “Let him know where he came from, why you brought him here—”

“Why place such a burden on our son?” Odin asks, taking her hands into his, “He does not need to know. He should never think that he is not a true part of this family.”

“If you seriously intend for him to bring true peace and friendship between our world and Jotunheim, then he will have to know eventually,” Frigga points out.

Odin waves a hand in the air, “As long as we raise both of our sons as kings, he will have the ability to accomplish that.”

“But there is only one throne,” Frigga says, slipping her hand out of his, “It is cruel to dangle possibilities that cannot be.”

“Nonsense,” Odin says, shaking his head, “It will make both of them strive to be better.”

“It’ll breed resentment.”

“That is how all the kings of Asgard have been raised, and we have made an empire from that,” Odin insists.

“We have made enemies and a mad daughter from that,” she corrects softly, looking down at the tiles of the floor.

Odin sighs, “We will try our best to rectify our errors.”

“Do you ever miss her?” she asks, walking out toward her balcony and resting her arms against the rail.

“Do you?”

“You were closer to her, but sometimes—sometimes I remember what she was like before she fully became the weapon you wanted her to be. I remember braiding her hair, and singing her songs—”

“That girl is gone now, my queen,” Odin says heavily, standing at her side and placing a hand on her shoulder.

“And that is our fault,” she replies, looking down at the courtyard.

“Yes, but not all is lost,” Odin says, gesturing at Thor wandering around the courtyard.

“Be easier on him than you were on Hela,” she says, watching her son clap his hands together with delight and pick up a snake.

“I will try my best as long as you try to restrain yourself from teaching Loki tricks that will drive his tutors to an early grave,” Odin replies drily as the snake in Thor’s hands turns into Loki attempting to stab Thor with a toy knife.

“He is very gifted,” Frigga says with a small smile as their sons tussle in the courtyard.

And he only becomes more so as he grows older and asks Frigga for more books and tips about knives, and she is happy to do so.

(For all that Thor looks like her, he takes after his father, and Odin takes great pride in training him.

Perhaps too much pride.

Loki is ill-suited to the brawler tactics of his brother, father, and sister, so she teaches him something else. She teaches him how to weave convincing illusions, how to time them just right to get the drop on an enemy, and how best to dodge and stab.

Parents are not supposed to have favorites, but if Odin was allowed to favor Thor, then she would love Loki all the more. Strange that of all her children, the one she loves best is the one she has never carried in her womb.)

She worries sometimes about the way Loki sulks, disappearing for days and usually only coming back when all the servants are screaming about a plague of frogs in Thor’s bedroom or Thor himself storming in with his golden hair now all green, but then he’s off again planning another madcap adventure with Thor, and all is well again, barring the inevitable cuts, bruises, and screaming.

And so her sons grow, Thor gaining Mjolnir (she hoped it served him better than in the end it had served Hela), and Loki gaining secrets (he slips Heimdall’s gaze multiple times, and she is torn between pride and worry) and a truly ostentatious helmet, until Odin decides Thor is ready for the throne.

He is not, and Odin banishes him for it.

“Will you cast away all of our children when they displease you?” she asks, storming into his room.

“He hungers for war, without understanding _any_ of the consequences—”

“And if he does, who taught him that, Odin _Glad-Of-War_?” she shoots back, clenching the folds of her dress in her white-knuckled hands, “Who taught Hela—”

“Do you want to see him become like _her_? Lost in bloodlust and battle-fury, with no thought of _anything_ else—”

“I would see my children at my side, not _banished_ to some godforsaken place every time they disappointed me! I would see us actually teach them—”

“I don’t see you rushing to Hela’s side,” he snarls, “You wanted her _dead_.”

“Better dead than trapped for eternity,” she says, making a cutting motion with her hand, “Besides, Hela is lost to us, but Thor is _not.”_

“Thor needs to learn humility—”

“When did _you_ ever learn that?”

“Perhaps that is the problem,” he admits heavily, drawing a shaky hand across his face, “Do you not want our son to be better than us?”

And she does, she _does,_ but as Odin falls into Odinsleep, and Loki places a trembling hand on Gungnir with the newfound knowledge of his true heritage heavy on his shoulders, she does not believe that this is the right way.

But be that as it may, with Odin weakened, she is the only one left to bolster the wards around her lost daughter, so she once again opens a path to that forsaken void and steps through.

“Hello, mother. How is my replacement?” Hela asks with a sickly sweet tone, drawing a hand through her dark hair, “Are they everything you dreamed of and more? Are they _better_ than me?”

She ignores her in favor of sweeping a hand over the runes that line the void and ensuring their integrity (her sons are not her daughter, and even after all these years she finds it hard to compare them.

As much as she hates to admit it, Thor’s joy in battle does resemble his sister’s, but he is both quick to anger and to laugh it all off. He does not have her malice or her spite.

That oddly enough, falls to her youngest child. Loki can nurse a grudge with a worrying amount of malicious glee until he manages to one-up whoever displeased him.)

“Has father fallen to Odinsleep once again?” Hela asks, changing tack, “It must be quite bad this time if you are here.”

“He will rise again, as he always does,” Frigga replies softly, lifting her hand as the runes surge with power once more.

Hela laughs, a sound that reminds Frigga more of the crunch of broken glass, “He is getting _old,_ mother, as are you. One day he will not, and then my replacement will _learn_ what it means to try and take my birthright.”

“Perhaps, but that day is not today,” Frigga says steadily.

Hela shakes her head, “You will not always be there to restrain him from danger, mother.”

Frigga lets out a small breath, “I may not have been able to restrain you, but I can still restrain him.”

“But not my replacement?” Hela asks, tilting her head to the side as a sly smile creeps across her face, “Are they giving you trouble, dear mother?”

“Less trouble than you,” Frigga replies before stepping back into Asgard and away from the ruins of her daughter.

Sadly though, her words are not true. Loki falls into madness, into the void, and finally into the service of a monster and delusional thoughts of conquest before his brother brings him home muzzled and in chains, and all she can do is beg Odin to not execute her youngest son.

(It is not lost on her, the irony of their switched positions now.)

“He is your _son.”_

Odin lets out a short bark of laughter, “After all he has done, we may as well call him Laufeyson—”

“He is _our_ son, and Hela has done worse, and you let her live—”

“What is the difference between Hela and Loki that you would plead with me now to spare him while calling for her death? He was always your favorite,” Odin says bitterly.

“Hela can only be what we made her to be. She cannot change, nor will she ever want to. Loki—I do not believe he is lost,” she says, digging her nails into the palm of her hands.

“You do not believe, or you cannot believe?”

(To be completely honest, she is not sure, but she is _not_ going to lose yet another one of her children.

She refuses to believe that somehow she has created _two_ monsters.)

“I do not believe,” she says, glaring at him, “He fell into madness—”

“As did Hela.”

Frigga shakes her head, “Hela never fell into madness; _we_ pushed her there. Hela was the weapon that you and I forged, and she could not change. She still holds true to her purpose. Loki can still recover.”

“And what of all the people he has killed?”

“He will be locked away in the dungeons, forever banished from the throne. Is that not punishment enough?”

Odin seems to think so, but Thor is skeptical, especially after he finds her bringing Loki books and furniture.

“He tried to kill me, mother,” Thor says heavily, sitting down in her chambers, “I fear—I fear that my brother is gone.”

“And you would have him killed for that?” she asks, raising an eyebrow.

“No! I mean—” Thor draws a hand across his chin and groans, “I don’t know. When I went to Midgard, I thought I could save him, but he—he didn’t want to be saved. He wouldn’t listen to me, he wouldn’t come home; he just kept killing people and trying to conquer the whole planet.”

“I told your father that we should have just told the truth from the start,” she said sadly, looking down at the pond in her room, “And now look at us.”

“Is his madness because he is a Frost Giant?” Thor asks, biting his lip.

Frigga shook her head, “We should not have told you stories of the Frost Giants as monsters either. Loki is as he ever was—”

“He never craved the throne with such blind ambition,” Thor protests.

“You may not have seen it, but you were both raised to be kings, for better or worse,” Frigga says gently, sitting down next to her son.

“Is it my fault? I wasn’t fast enough to stop him from letting go—should I have talked to him more—I thought we knew everything about each other—”

“You did all you could,” Frigga says, placing a hand on his shoulder, “If anything, I failed him.”

(She’s failed two of her children now.)

Thor reaches up and places his hand over hers, “Mother, any good that is left in Loki—I feel that all that remains is because of you. He still loves you.”

“He still loves us all, even if his perspective of that has become twisted,” Frigga says, smiling sadly.

Thor takes a deep shuddering breath, “I do not want to go see him down there. I do not want to see him like that.”

Frigga nods, “I know. When you feel you are ready then.”

“I miss him,” Thor whispers, looking up at her with all the sorrow of his years seeming to weigh down on him at once, “I miss who he was. I miss my brother.”

She draws him into her arms and hugs him close, reaching one hand up to the cradle the back of his head, “I do as well,” she says softly, “One day—one day he’ll be back. You’ll see.”

(She has to believe that.)

And it doesn’t happen before her death, but perhaps she should take some pleasure in the fact that her death is the one thing that brings her boys back together again.

Valhalla calls for her, a triumphant requiem in the stars, but she has unfinished business. There are still things that need to be said to the two children that she has failed.

“Well,” says Hela, looking at Frigga with a shadow of surprise, “This is unexpected. I assume this means father will soon be following you into the grave?”

“Not for a few more years, I hope,” Frigga replies steadily, floating in the void.  

Hela snorts, “Without you, I doubt he’ll last long. So glad mother that you came to tell me to start planning my return to glory.”

“I wanted to see you, one last time,” Frigga says softly.

“You can see me again when I have ascended the throne. Goddess of death, remember?” Hela says flippantly, leaning back.

Frigga sighs, “Ah, my dear, and when you have the throne, the kingdom, the empire, what then?”

“What do you mean?”

“What comes after that?”

Hela has a sudden lost look in her eyes, but quickly shakes her head, “There’s always another world to conquer or an insurrection to put down mother, you know that. A queen’s job is never over.”

“A queen should think of her people first,” Frigga reminds her.

Hela shrugs, “It’s all for the glory of Asgard.”

“If you still believe that, daughter of mine, then you will fall.”

“To my replacement?” Hela laughs, “I doubt that.”

Frigga reaches a spectral hand out to Hela, “Whatever may come Hela, I hope you may someday find peace.”

“I need no well-wishes from you, mother,” Hela replies, holding her head up high.

And that would have to be that, there is nothing more she can do for her daughter (except pray for a quick, painless end and then rest hereafter), but Loki is not yet lost, no matter how far he wanders, so she waits until he is finally in the right state of mind to see her to appear before him.

Of course it comes right after Loki tried to betray Thor once again, but her eldest son managed to turn the tables and shock Loki into just lying on the ground, but she will take what she can get.

“Hello, Loki,” she says, bending down with a fond smile on her face.

(How many times had she picked up her children from the ground?)

“ _Mother_ ,” Loki gasps, “This is—you’re dead, I’m hallucinating—Thor must have shocked me more than I realized—”

“Visions are standard Aesir fare Loki, you know that. Even Thor has had some from time to time,” she says, looking over her shoulder to where Thor was currently fiddling around with a brightly colored ship.

“Mother, I am sorry for what I said—the last things I said to you—”

“If the tears in your eyes did not tell me that you did not mean it, I would have known regardless, Loki,” she interrupts reaching a hand out.

Loki jerks his arm forward, and his hand goes through hers, “Ah. So we’re back to this. Why are you not in Valhalla, mother?”

“I had regrets and last words I wished to give to my children.”

“Including Hela?”

She sighs and nods, “Including your sister, yes.”

“She was your disappointment—”

“No. She was exactly what her father and I wanted her to be, and that is our sin.”

Loki shook his head, “What was the plan? For her to just show up out of nowhere and challenge us as soon as Odin died? If so, it’s going _swimmingly_.”

She spreads out her hands, “The plan was that Thor would have already ascended the throne and tapped into all his powers as Asgard’s ruler by the time your father passed—”

“Except Thor is too oafish to take the throne,” Loki interrupts, trying to sit up but his arms tremble and jerk and land him on the ground again.

“—and that you would be there to advise him,” Frigga finishes, passing an insubstantial hand over Loki’s brow.

“Is that all I was for? To _advise?_ ” Loki asks with a bitter scowl on his face.

“You took your father’s place for two years. Was it everything you dreamed of?” she asks.

“And more,” Loki answers mulishly.

“And the people?”

“Asgard was fine,” Loki says brusquely.

“And the other nine realms?”

Loki lets out an annoyed huff of a breath, “Shouldn’t you be in Valhalla, mother?”

“And just a few seconds ago, you were so happy to see me,” Frigga says wryly.

“I _am_ happy to see you, mother. Truly, I am,” Loki says earnestly, looking up at her, “There is no one else—no one knows me as you do.”

“Then listen closely to your mother Loki,” Frigga says making her voice serious, “I know you could reign over this trash planet in days if you wished to. However—you were always at your best with your brother, and so was he.”

“He seems to have been doing rather well without me,” Loki says, staring at the colorful ship flying away.

“He manages, but Thor misses you as much as you miss him.”

“I don’t—He said he would be fine with us never seeing each other again,” Loki argues, giving her a mulish look so much like his father’s.

Frigga laughs and shakes her head, “Loki, he thinks that is what you want. And it is what you have continually been saying. He is tired of fighting you, my dear, and he just wants you to be happy.”

“Odd way of showing it,” Loki says with a grunt as he finally manages to heave himself off of the ground.

“No odder than you,” she points out.

“So you think I should go and confront my eldest sister who is apparently the goddess of death at the side of my brother who wants nothing to do with me?” he asks, with a quirk of his eyebrow.

“It would be the biggest surprise of Thor’s life if you went to go help him now. And you would prove him wrong,” she points out with a small smile.

“He’d make that stupid dopey happy look on his face,” Loki says, the corners of his mouth creeping up a bit, “And our people would be so grateful.”

“Most likely,” Frigga says drily, “Deliver them from our family strife, Loki. Show them what a god of mischief is capable of.”

Loki presses his hand against his shoulder and gives a short bow, “I shall endeavor my best to do so.”

She smiles as she fades away, “Make me proud.”

And they do.

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like the ending was a little disjointed, but I hope you enjoyed it! Please comment/leave kudos!


End file.
